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Additional quotes from Nobel winners' colleagues and students
Additional quotes from the colleagues and students of 2011 Nobel Prize in economics winners Christopher Sims and Thomas Sargent:
Paul Krugman, a Princeton professor of economics and public affairs and a 2008 Nobel laureate, from his Conscience of a Liberal blog:
"Go Princeton! (And NYU)
"This year's Nobel goes to Chris Sims and Tom Sargent. Many congratulations. I'd advise both of them to grab as much sleep as they can over the next few months, because it's gonna be exhausting.
"This is a statistical techniques prize — both men worked on methods for extracting insight from the data history provides us, which generally don't offer anything like a controlled experiment. As the detailed explanation of the prize (.pdf) explains, before Sargent and Sims came along, econometrics consisted largely of estimating models you had no good reason to believe based on identifying assumptions (if you don't already know, you don't want to) that lacked credibility. S and S played a key role in developing methods that let the data speak instead.
"Is this a fresh-water macro prize? Sargent is surely identified with that school, and to some extent these techniques have tended to be associated with fresh-water modeling. But they're much more widely used than that. For example, Barry Eichengreen, who does a lot of quantitative economic history from a relatively Keynesian perspective, routinely uses Sims-type time-series techniques, e.g. in this paper on multipliers in the Great Depression.
"So, again, congrats to the new laureates."
After the Nobel Prize press conference on the Princeton campus, Krugman spoke about how the experience might effect the new Nobel laureates. "If it's anything like mine, they're totally have an out-of-body experience right now. It's wild. All these people who you had no idea had your cell phone number have clogged your voicemail totally. It's going to take a month to get through the stack of congratulations. It turns your whole world upside down. I was really, really happy for about a day, then completely snowed under until after the ceremony was over (in December). Then I enjoyed it only after that. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing."
Regarding the importance of the Nobel award for the University, Krugman added, "We already knew it was a great university. Princeton's is actually the best economics department in the world, but this is a bit of external validation of that."
* * *
Eric Maskin, a visiting lecturer with the rank of professor in Princeton's Department of Economics and a 2007 Nobel laureate, said of the newest Nobel laureates, "If they feel the way I did four years ago, they're feeling overwhelmed. This day is sensory overload. You just get hit over and over again in a very nice way, but it's incessant: phone calls, press conferences, congratulations from anyone you've ever known. It's very hard to process all at one time. You need some weeks to really start coming to terms with it."
He added, "This year's Nobel in economics recognizes economic science with a capital S. Tom Sargent and Chris Sims are exemplary (and creative) practitioners of the idea that truth emerges in economics through rigorous theory and meticulous attention to data."
* * *
Mark Watson, Princeton's Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and acting chair of the economics department, said of Sims and Sargent, "They've changed macroeconomics in the biggest way possible, and allowed us to credibly answer questions that we just couldn't have answered before."
Citing their work in sorting out cause and effect in macroeconomics, Watson said, "It's always difficult to sort out cause and effect when the effect feeds back on causes. Sims developed methods that allow us to look at data and tease out cause and effect, as though you were doing a controlled experiment.
"Sims is one of the nicest guys in the world, and one of the best citizens we have in the department," he added. Sims postponed the sabbatical he was set to take this year because the department needed him to teach an undergraduate course, Watson said.
"Sims has trained hordes of graduate students; he's a wonderful adviser. He brings out the best research in our students, and he cares and spends lots of time with them," Watson said.
Sargent and Sims are co-teaching a graduate course this semester on advanced macroeconomics. Sargent, who was a visiting professor at Princeton last year as well, also is teaching a graduate course on macroeconomic theory. "In addition to doing pathbreaking research, Sargent is an inspirational classroom teacher," Watson said. "Students leave his class so excited. He really turns graduate students on to macroeconomics. He's been doing that his entire career."
* * *
Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, a Princeton professor of economics, said Sargent and Sims' work "brings theoretical macroeconomics and empirical macroeconomics closer together. In this sense, their work is a fundamental contribution to modern macroeconomics. Sims' research is tremendously influential for policy analysis."
* * *
Richard Rogerson, a Princeton professor of economics and public affairs, was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota in the same period that Sims and Sargent were members of the faculty there. Sims and Sargent "were in the prime of their careers, but you could go knock on their doors and they would spend as much time as you wanted talking to you. They always had time to talk to students," Rogerson recalled. "These faculty were in a seminar room, interacting with each other and arguing about things. I was lucky just to be able to witness that."
* * *
Justin Weidner, a first-year graduate student in economics at Princeton who is in Sargent's class "Macroeconomic Theory I," said he was very excited to hear that his professor had been recognized. Weidner became familiar with Sargent's work as an undergraduate.
"He's pretty famous," Weidner said. "I was excited to know he was teaching this class. He's my favorite professor -- he explains things really clearly, he's funny and he's down to earth."
* * *
Lars Svensson, deputy director of Sweden's central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, worked in Princeton's Department of Economics with Sims from 2001 to 2009.
"At Princeton I had the great privilege of having the office next door to Chris's. We talked very much, and we taught graduate courses together. I enjoyed my interaction with Chris tremendously, and I miss it very much. I have learnt a lot about macroeconomics, monetary and fiscal policy, and expectations from Chris," Svensson said.
"This prize is extremely well deserved. Chris and Tom have developed scientific methods that are extremely useful," Svensson added. "Their methods are not only used very much in empirical and theoretical research, their methods are also used every day by central banks and finance ministries all over the world. It is difficult to conceive of modern monetary and fiscal policy without the use of the methods developed by Chris and Tom."
* * *
Eric Leeper, a professor of economics at Indiana University, studied under Sims as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota when Sims was a professor there, and has since co-written papers with him.
"He really created the path by which most empirical work in macroeconomics is now being done," Leeper said. "Central banks have formal models that they use, and those models are typically estimated using the kinds of methods Chris developed and has advocated. Because these models help to inform policy, Chris' work has had a powerful influence on policymaking around the world."
Working on his Ph.D. with Sims had a strong effect on his career, Leeper said.
"Chris has always been extraordinarily open-minded about research -- he's not an ideologue about methodology. As a student of his, that open-mindedness had a strong influence on me, and sticks with me to this day. It comes in part from the realization that we don't have all the answers and we need to be fairly agnostic about how we approach research."
He recalls that he and his fellow graduate students felt intimidated by studying with Sims, but that feeling dissolved when Sims held a cookout for them at his house in Minneapolis in the mid-1980s. The distance between student and professor vanished when a tornado warning went off, and everyone crowded into Sims' basement, where they discussed Sims' interest in photography and other non-economics topics.
* * *
Frank Schorfheide, a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, said, "Sims was my dissertation adviser at Yale. He had a large number of students, and we all benefitted from his advising and conversations. He was very generous with his time. You could meet with him on a regular basis. His research really revolutionized the field. The methods that he developed 30 years ago are still widely used today to inform policy decisions."
"He was a great source of advice, always 10 steps ahead of you. As a student you had to learn to catch up, which is a good challenge. Sometimes we didn't quite understand him the first time around, but eventually — three or four weeks later — we understood. My research is very much based on his work and trying to carry it in different directions. I'm very much indebted to him for all the ideas and suggestions that he provided."


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Current Songs, a Randy Jackson Workshop and More Changes for American Idol Season 13
The new judging panel isn't the only change coming to American Idol this season.
When the reality singing competition show returns for its 13th season Wednesday (8/7c, Fox), the basic formula will stay the same, but the show will be revitalized in key ways. "We've made a lot of small changes, nothing radical," Idol executive producer Trish Kinane said at Fox's Television Critics Association winter previews on Monday. "They're freshening changes that really add up to a fresh feel."
Jack vs. Chloe! Scoop on 24: Live Another Day
Here's a breakdown of what changes we can expect:
Less conflict: Even before the first question is asked, host Ryan Seacrest tells the critics, "They're fun. They're getting along. It's going to be great." Of course he's referring to the new panel of returning judges Keith Urban and Jennifer Lopez and newbie judge Harry Connick, Jr., who had previously acted as a guest mentor. Throughout the panel, Connick, Jr. praised his colleagues for their work ethics and tenacity. It's clear that this panel does not lack respect for each other. "You want to see people having fun and having a laugh. It shines... it will be spectacular when we get to go live," Seacrest said.
Camp Dawg? Randy Jackson may have left the judges' table, but the producers are building up a whole different part of the show for him to highlight his mentoring. Between Hollywood Week and the live shows, "Randy is going to be hosting a two-day workshop," Kinane explained. During that time, the singers will go through extra education to work on song selection, their images and styles as artists, how to deal with emotional pressure and more aspects of performance. "Randy is very much putting this together, and that will carry through to the live shows," Kinane said.
Fox boss on the future of X Factor, upcoming series Gotham
Better songs: The young Idol wannabes will have a better chance of singing songs they actually connect with this time around. "We have a new approach to the music themes... where the kids can sing sings that they really relate to," new executive producer Per Blankens said. That means less Burt Bacharach and BeeGees! Idol has also expanded its song list too include more contemporary songs.
The Chamber: Adding a little more insight into the singers themselves is The Chamber, which sounds a lot more ominous than it is. It's an enclosed vestibule singers go into before their first auditions where they can center themselves before taking the plunge. "Some people pray, some people sing, some people look under their arms to see if they're perspiring," Kinane said.
Rush Week: Idol producers apparently listened to viewer feedback about losing patience with the drawn-out middle rounds and are condensing it all into one week, dubbed Rush Week. Over the course of three nights (Feb. 18-20), the Top 15 female contestants will learn their fates, then the Top 15 male contestants, and finally we'll meet the Top 3 finalists in the first live results show in Los Angeles.
Are you excited about the new season of American Idol?
American Idol premieres on Wednesday and Thursday at 8/7c on Fox.
View original Current Songs, a Randy Jackson Workshop and More Changes for American Idol Season 13 at TVGuide.com
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subset: commoncrawl


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Unemployment falls in 75 percent of US states
WASHINGTON — An increase in hiring helped lower unemployment rates in 37 U.S. states last month, the latest indication that the job market is slowly healing.
Unemployment rates are now below 7 percent in 23 of the 50 states. The Labor Department says rates rose in seven states in October and were unchanged in six.
South Carolina's rate fell from 9.1 percent to 8.6 percent, the biggest drop among states. It has fallen a full percentage point in just two months. The state gained 7,300 jobs in October, mostly in hotels, restaurants, education and health care, and government. Alaska and Wisconsin recorded the next biggest declines.
Nationwide, the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent in October. But it has declined a full point in the past year. Employers added 171,000 jobs in October. Job gains in September and August were also much stronger than initially estimated. That raised the average job growth from July through September to 174,000 a month, up from 67,000 a month in the April-June quarter.
The biggest job gains among states in October were in California and Texas. California employers added 45,800 positions. Texas gained 36,600 jobs.
Michigan, New Jersey and Minnesota shed the most jobs.
Nevada reported the highest unemployment rate, at 11.5 percent. But the rate fell from 11.8 percent in September and is at its lowest level in three and a half years. It has fallen almost two percentage points in the past twelve months.
North Dakota had the lowest unemployment rate among states, at 3.1 percent. The state has benefited from an oil and gas drilling boom.


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Apple has not had much of a history with respect to enterprise computing, but an analysis of second quarter sales shows Apple making big gains in business and government sectors. According to Needham analyst Charlie Wolf, sales of Macs to large businesses in particular grew far more than overall sales of PCs in the same timeframe. The specific reasons for the uptick aren't clear, but Apple could sustain the growth with a more proactive enterprise strategy.
In a research note, Needham compared growth in shipments between Macs and the PC market in general in several market segments. Macs grew less than the overall PC market in education—traditionally one of Apple's stronger segments, but one that has sagged recently with tight education budgets leaning in favor of cheaper Windows boxes. In the home market, Mac sales outpaced overall PCs by a slight margin, in line with Apple's consumer focus and the success of its notebooks.
These slight variances seem inconsequential when looking at the business and government markets, though. Mac shipments to businesses grew 50 percent in the second quarter of 2010, beating the overall market growth of 16 percent. Sales to government organizations were up a whopping 200 percent, 16 times the overall market growth of 12 percent.
Breaking down the business segment further, Needham noted that Mac growth among smaller-sized businesses—somewhere Apple has typically done well—is outpacing the rest of the industry by a factor of three to four. However, Mac growth in "large" and "very large" businesses—the traditional Windows stronghold—is around 100 percent, while the rest of the industry grew about 20 percent in these same segments.
It's hard to say what factors contribute to such growth, as Apple has historically not made the enterprise a priority in its product mix, sales efforts, or service areas. Recent low-end iMacs and compact Mac minis may be tempting IT departments with a lower TCO. Apple's adoption of Intel processors has also made dual-booting or virtualizing Windows a viable option when critical applications can't be replaced with a Mac OS X equivalent. And the rise of Web-based applications—increasingly being built using modern, cross-platform standards—makes choosing between platforms less of a factor when choosing computers for enterprise use.
Another factor may be a sort of enterprise halo effect caused by the iPhone. While the iPod seemed to put Apple's computers in the minds of consumers, the iPhone may be having a similar effect in the enterprise. As more business users adopt the iPhone as an all-in-one mobile device for business and personal use, they may be requesting an Apple desktop or laptop for use at work as well, a request that "consumerized" IT departments may be more inclined to go along with.
With Apple so intensely focused on the consumer market, it doesn't offer the same kind of appeal to traditional enterprise infrastructure. Still, these results for the second quarter show that there is interest in Apple products in the business sector. Perhaps the time is right for Apple to leverage the renewed attention it's getting and be a bit more proactive about targeting the enterprise.


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Morning Minutes: May 23
Staff Writer
Morning Minutes: May 23
Word of the Day
Nimiety ni-MAHY-i-tee (noun) Excess; overabundance - dictionary.com
Website of the day
Bonnie and Clyde
The FBI's official page on Bonnie and Clyde.
Number to Know
$250,000: Amount the Primm Valley Resort and Casino in Las Vegas paid in 1988 for the stolen Ford Deluxe Bonnie and Clyde were shot in.
This Day in History
May 23, 1934: Infamous criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are killed by police in Louisiana.
Today's Featured Birthday
Comedian Drew Carey (55)
Daily Quote
"For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind." - Ralph Waldo Emerson


text: KSAA Annual Awards Dinner, MLA 2011 Submitted by Steve Jones on Mon, 09/20/2010 - 17:40 The Keats-Shelley Association of America's annual awards dinner at MLA will be held this year on Saturday, 8 January 2011. A cash bar opens at 5:30 PM and dinner begins at 7:00 PM, at the Standard Hotel Downtown Los Angeles, 550 S. Flower at Sixth Street. This year the Association will honor distinguished scholars Christopher RIcks and Julie Carlson. For reservations, send $60 by 15 December 2010 to: Steven Jones Loyola University Chicago Department of English Crown Center 421 1032 W. Sheridan Road Chicago, IL 60660


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On the Outer Limits of The Outer Limits
March 1, 2011
You're a big fan of a TV show and you've seen all the episodes more times than you can count. You read the companion book. You memorized the DVD extras. You wore out the internet message board. But it's not enough. Like any fan of anything, you want more. More stuff like the stuff you love. More stuff made by the people who made the original stuff.
Every cult show has this sort of marginalia: the proto-pilot ("The Time Element") that Rod Serling drafted a year before The Twilight Zone; the one-season military drama (The Lieutenant) on which Gene Roddenberry employed many of the actors and crew who would eventually staff Star Trek. For fans of The Outer Limits, the short-lived but often astounding fantasy anthology that ran on ABC for a year and a half in 1963 and 1964, there is a tantalizing roster of such tangential media.
The Outer Limits had two fathers, and most of this ephemera adheres to one or the other of them. Leslie Stevens, an entrepreneur and playwright of stage and live television, created the show and wrote some of the episodes with a hard-science fiction bent. Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter of Psycho, produced the first season and fostered the tone of delirious, neo-gothic paranoia that made The Outer Limits truly original.
For Stevens cultists, there's Private Property, the 1959 independent film he wrote, directed, and produced, starring his then-wife Kate Manx (later a suicide) and Outer Limits guest Warren Oates. There's Incubus (found revived on DVD a decade ago, with copious special features), a 1965 horror film that Stevens wrote and directed in the made-up language Esperanto, featuring his next wife, Allyson Ames, and William Shatner. There's Stoney Burke (out of circulation but findable among collectors), the underrated, downbeat modern-day rodeo drama starring Jack Lord, which ran on ABC for a single season just prior to The Outer Limits. And there's "Fanfare For a Death Scene," the unsold pilot for a series to be called Stryker, which was produced by Stevens's company, Daystar, during the run of The Outer Limits.
For Stefano, the more important talent, there is Eye of the Cat (still hard to find, although I saw a print five years ago at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), a pretty dreadful 1969 thriller adapted from an unproduced Outer Limits script. There's The Unknown (circulating among collectors), an alternate, unsold-pilot cut of the classic Outer Limits episode "The Forms of Things Unknown." But the holy grail has always been The Haunted, the pilot for an occult drama that Stefano almost sold to CBS immediately after he left The Outer Limits. (The Haunted may be better known under the title "The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre," a title applied to a longer version shown as a feature in markets outside the United States.)
For years, The Haunted lurked in the shadows, a ghost indeed, taunting Outer Limits fans with its consummate obscurity. Supposedly Stefano himself made the rounds of the archives in his last years (he died in 2006), looking in vain for a print of it. David J. Schow, the author of the exhaustive The Outer Limits Companion, who had not seen The Haunted when either the first (1986) or second (1998) editions of the book were published, put the word out among collectors every few years. Nothing emerged. Then a copy screened at a fantasy film festival in Japan, but reports in English were few. A print surfaced on Ebay, sold for a pittance, and disappeared again.
Finally, early this year, the UCLA Film and Television Archive came to the rescue. A sixteen-millimeter print of The Haunted had resided at the Archive since at least the late 1990s, but few people (especially Stefano fans) were aware of its existence. As with many cultural artifacts that have been overzealously declared "lost," this was a case where no one had thought to ask the right person. Although UCLA's print had been transferred to video and was available to visiting researchers, the Archive's Mark Quigley, one of the Outer Limits faithful, thought that wasn't good enough. Quigley campaigned for a public screening of The Haunted as part of UCLA's Archive Treasures series. Last week, paired with a thirty-five millimeter print of The Unknown, The Haunted was given a proper (if belated) premiere at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, with Stefano's widow Marilyn and other family members in attendance.
The Haunted stars Martin Landau as Nelson Orion, a modern architect and "the country's foremost restoration expert," who's more preoccupied by his second and presumably less lucrative career as a "psychic consultant." In other words, Orion investigates incidents of the paranormal. Are they real, or phony? Orion has detective skills rooted in this world, but also a kind of shining for the otherworldly that's not fully explained in the pilot. "I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm afraid of them," is the epigram that Orion quotes to sum up his philosophy.
In the pilot, Orion's client is one Vivia Mandore (Diane Baker), a wealthy young woman whose new husband is doubly luckless: Henry Mandore (Tom Simcox) is blind, and he's being haunted by the ghost of his domineering mother. Vivia hopes to save her marriage by plucking Henry from the grasp of this wraith, who communicates by telephone from her crypt and finally manifests itself in the form of a glowing, skull-faced ghost.
Orion suspects that someone is orchestrating the supernatural goings-on in order to lay claim to the Mandore millions, and fixes his attention on the foreboding family housekeeper, Paulina. But then Stefano's script pulls a switch: Paulina is not the agent of the haunting, but the target. The ghost is real, and it has a complicated reason for descending upon both Paulina and Vivia, one rooted in their shared secret past.
It's a shame to puncture the excitement of discovery by pointing out that The Haunted, while fascinating, is a lesser work in Stefano's portfolio. Although Stefano's work was always allusive – the demented genius of "The Forms of Things Unknown" is not at all reduced by the fact that the script is a blatant reworking of Clouzot's Diabolique – The Haunted is built out of a grab-bag of references that fail to cohere. There's a strain of The Premature Burial (the phone in the dead woman's crypt) and a very obvious debt to Hitchcock's Rebecca, in the casting of Dame Judith Anderson as a character initially identical to Mrs. Danvers. And the ghost's non-corporeal manifestations were probably inspired by Robert Wise's then-recent The Haunting: a noisy, aggressive poltergeist, physically assaulting a young woman with an unseen energy.
All of these ideas feel recycled, and less interesting than the element of autobiography visible in the character of Nelson Orion. Distracted from his established profession by the folly of ghost-chasing, nagged by a business manager (Outer Limits vet Leonard Stone) who thinks that he's "squandering" his talent, Orion is a thinly-disguised portrait of Joseph Stefano, circa 1965, a man who had walked away from safer opportunities as a writer and producer in order to launch his own pilots and to direct. Just as Nelson Orion's career was stunted by CBS's rejection of the pilot, Stefano's ambitions beyond screenwriting went unfulfilled.
Part of the problem with The Haunted may be Stefano's direction, which is stiff and uncertain. Although Stefano had hoped to direct The Unknown (ABC said no), he had not assumed that position initially on The Haunted. Instead, he hired Robert Stevens, a live TV veteran who had directed more segments of Alfred Hitchcock Presents than anyone else (and won an Emmy for the classic "The Glass Eye"). Stevens was famously eccentric (apparently he bowed out of The Haunted because his psychiatrist died), but also a bold visual stylist with a taste for chiaroscuro lighting and smooth, muscular camera movement. Stevens might have fit in with the Outer Limits gang.
In his place, Stefano plays it safe, sticking with more static compositions and flatter lighting than one is used to seeing on The Outer Limits. One reason that interest in The Haunted has persisted is that it reunited much of the key Outer Limits creative team, especially cinematographer Conrad Hall, camera operator William Fraker, and composer Dominic Frontiere. But the dreamy Hall-Fraker imagery is only sporadically evident in The Haunted; it's a far cry from the wall-to-wall bizarrely-angled, vaseline-lensed, hand-held camera tour-de-forces of their key Outer Limits segments, the ones they photographed for more experienced directors like Gerd Oswald, John Brahm, or Leonard Horn.
Stefano appears to have been hobbled by a low budget, production problems (Henry's scenes were reshot, with Tom Simcox replacing the troubled John Barrymore, Jr.), inexperience (an attempt at a ghost point-of-view shot comes off crude and distracting), and indecision (apparently Stefano disliked Frontiere's original score and replaced most of it with cues written for The Unknown). But the biggest problem, I think, is Stefano's decision to convey the elaborate backstory of Sierra de Cobre – the origins of his ghost – through dialogue, without resorting to any flashbacks. A tale of paranormal mayhem more intriguing than the one we're actually seeing on-screen is reduced to an indigestible chunk of exposition. This trick had paid off for Stefano before: some of his best Outer Limits episodes ("Don't Open Till Doomsday," "The Invisibles," "The Forms of Things Unknown") consisted entirely of a few people in an old mansion, talking for an hour. Stefano's off-kilter writing, coupled with the brilliant imagery laid a heavy air of dread over those episodes. They weren't talky, they were eery and claustrophobic.
In The Haunted, though, the slack pacing exposes the faults in Stefano's writing, which in is sometimes verbose and stilted. Was he rushed for time? When nothing else is going on in the frame, it's hard to not to wince at lugubrious dialogue like this: "Well, you ended the haunting, Mr. Orion. I suppose the only thing that will haunt me now is other people's anguish."
Even if The Haunted doesn't rank among Stefano's masterpieces, it's still full of inspired ideas, many of which will resonate especially for the Outer Limits cognoscenti. If your show is about an architect, he pretty much has to live in a cool house, and The Haunted delivers on that promise: Orion's pad is a talon-shaped promontory jutting out of the side of a deserted beachside cliff. The one iconic composition in The Haunted is a tableau, repeated for emphasis, of the black-clad Paulina, seen from behind, staring up from the rocky beach at Orion's bizarre hillside domicile. The show's title sequence is also enormously imaginative, a collage of several images that revealed to be tricks of perpective, most memorably a tidal wave washing over Los Angeles that morphs into a trickle of froth receding on a sandy beach. (Or vice versa – I've already forgotten how, exactly, the trick shot works.)
The ghost itself is a spooky image, one created with the same reversal effect as the title character in "The Galaxy Being"; one pilot connects back to the other. Stefano's ghostly visuals are upstaged by an aural effect, which may be the aspect of The Haunted that fans will remember after all else fades away. The ghostly sobbing emitted by the phone in the crypt is a horrible, nails-on-a-chalkboard sound – not a sound that makes you shiver but a sound that you just want to end, right now, which I imagine is exactly the effect that a real encounter with the paranormal would inspire.
It's hard to judge a character by just one adventure, but unlike a lot of projected television heroes, Nelson Orion may have been a fellow worth revisiting week after week. Stefano goes out of his way to style Orion as a sort of bohemian; in his own words, "a different kind of cat altogether." In the pilot this amounts to wearing white tennis shoes and a lot of sweaters; but it's likely that Stefano had it in mind to position Orion as an outsider with an open mind toward the counterculture. Had The Haunted continued into the late sixties, Stefano might have had some fun with that: a psychic detective in the era of LSD and in the world of beads, nehru jackets, and psychedelic colors. I also dug the presence of Nellie Burt as Orion's housekeeper and caretaker. Burt was a major discovery in two Outer Limits episodes, a motherly presence who nevertheless carried about her an aura of mystery and forboding. She would have been an ideal mascot for a weekly excursion into Stefanoland.
Stefano works themes into The Haunted that we associate with his work on The Outer Limits – a fixation on suicide; heavy symbolism (Henry's blindness serves no other function); and in particular an elaborate reaffirmation of the marital bond that is noteworthy for its transparent lack of conviction. Without giving too much away, the conclusion of the pilot sent me back to reread Schow's excellent coverage in the Companion of "ZZZZZ," which Stefano revised to reflect his own ideas on marital relations. The Haunted, it should be noted, was expanded for exhibition as a feature overseas, with a different ending that, on paper, sounds more satisfying. The longer cut remains elusive, but Quigley tells me that he is on the hunt.
How close did The Haunted actually come to getting on the air? It landed a spot on this draft of CBS's 1965-66 schedule. There are stories that CBS executives found the pilot too frightening for television, but apparently the show was a casualty of CBS president Jim Aubrey's ouster in early 1965.
When it rains, it pours: Although the fifty-minute version has existed among collectors for some time, the seventy three-minute, feature-length version of Leslie Stevens's busted pilot "Fanfare For a Death Scene," surfaced recently (and without any, er, fanfare at all) amid Netflix's streaming video offerings.
Cool title notwithstanding, "Fanfare" is a piece of opportunistic hackwork. Stevens created, produced, and directed the show, but farmed out the teleplay to Marion Hargrove, a humorist who captured the light touch of Maverick and I Spy in some fine scripts. But Stryker was to be a deadly-serious cash-in on the James Bond series, and Hargrove foundered, or just took the money and ran.
"Fanfare" stars Richard Egan (off the just-cancelled Empire/Redigo) as John Stryker, a super-powerful industrialist with a direct office line to the president. When that phone rings, he ruefully explains to his secretary (Outer Limits guest Dee Hartford), Stryker toddles off to the far ends of the world on secret spy missions. Like Nelson Orion, he's mastered his daytime job so thoroughly that he has to find his thrills elsewhere.
Stryker's mission in "Fanfare" concerns: a nuclear scientist on the lam from a mental asylum; a Mongolian terrorist so villainous that no nation will even admit his existence; an unpleasant helping of torture and violence; implied lesbianism and sadomasochism; futuristic gadgetry, including an omnipresent surveillance device that the villains deploy in Stryker's snazzy bachelor pad without his ever catching on (thus making our hero look like something of an imbecile); and an oddball cult cast that includes Telly Savalas (yes, playing the Mongolian warlord, complete with Fu Manchu 'stache), Viveca Lindfors, Tina Louise, Ed Asner, Burgess Meredith (who utters not one line but gets a lot of mileage out of his patented fruitcake expression), and Wo Fat himself, Khigh Dhiegh. Oh, and Al Hirt, nonsensically shoehorned (or just horned?) into the proceedings as a thinly-disguised version of himself.
All of that makes "Fanfare" sound a lot more exciting than it really is. You're going to want to take my word for this: it's unremittingly sleazy and dull.
I had planned to sort out which scenes in the long cut I hadn't seen before, but so much of both versions is "shoe leather" (that is, extraneous side-trips and car and airplane chases) that there doesn't seem to be much point. Ironically, it's the long version that ends abruptly, with the death of a minor villain; a subsequent shot of Savalas cackling and vowing revenge was deleted, probably because it too obviously teased future episodes. Another unaccountable omission from the longer version was my favorite scene from the pilot: a quick bit preceding the introduction of Stryker, in which Hartford orders around a pair of undersecretaries. Stryker is such a badass corporate crimefighter, he needs a whole harem of gorgeous, super-efficient executive assistants to do his bidding!
The sad footnote is that the Daystar triumvirate of Hall/Fraker/Frontiere worked on "Fanfare," too, and their respective talents are much more in evidence than in The Haunted. Frontiere contributes a bouncy, urgent, bright theme for Stryker which I think is original (although I did hear a section of the "oriental" theme from "The Hundred Days of the Dragon" at one point). The variety and scope of the material give Hall a lot of room to show off. Stevens puts the focus on the modernity and power of Stryker's world, so practically every shot is an extreme low angle gazing up at a skyscraper, a Rolls Royce, a private jet, a gorgeous babe, or a body falling from a concert hall's balcony. It's all totally superficial, but Hall and Fraker give their imagery a lot more energy than your average failed television pilot. (See also this addendum regarding the direction of Stryker, which was begun by the talented Walter Grauman. )
The most show-offy shot comes right after the opening credits: a seemingly endless handheld move through a private hospital, past nine drugged doctors and nurses, all draped artfully over various pieces of furniture. The camera comes to rest on the body of the head doctor, who's fallen into his blotter at such an angle that a pen is jabbing his eyelid open. The gruesome punchline was excised from the TV version, so I guess that's one reason to excavate this dud from the Netflix archives. Don't say you weren't warned.
Image from The Haunted courtesy the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Thanks to Mark Quigley, and to all the knowledgeable folks writing for the We Are Controlling Transmission Blog. And speaking of the latter, be sure to check out David Schow and Jeffrey Frentzen's fascinating account of the creation of The Outer Limits Companion. Their nearly ten-year struggle to complete that project, and the enduring value of the end result, makes me feel a little better about the pace of my own output.
Revised on March 2, 2011, to correct several errors pointed out during an e-mail exchange with Mark Quigley and David J. Schow, primarily my misapprehension that "The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre" was the episode title for The Haunted's pilot. It was not – the only title applied to the show during production was The Haunted.
10 Responses to "On the Outer Limits of The Outer Limits"
March 1, 2011 at 6:42 pm
Check out http://wearecontrollingtransmission.blogspot.com for a daily discussion of the OUTER LIMITS episodes. Some fascinating posts and comments about the series.
March 27, 2011 at 3:54 am
A very nice and informative reporting.
I am (highly) skeptical whether THE HAUNTED (CBS 1964) would have faired well in a late 10:00 p.m. timeslot against the established powerhouse THE FUGITIVE (ABC 1963-67) as apparently intended.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s I had seen the lengthier 80 minute cut of THE HAUNTED (CBS 1964) aired from time-to-time as a made-for-television film THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRA (1964) on Canadian tv stations.
United Artists Television did have the film version as a tv syndication property.
It would be nice if both the unaired television pilot and the (improvised) film version made available on DVD (standard or blu-ray).
April 29, 2013 at 11:44 am
Considering what Stephen said about this show, maybe it's better if it's not on DVD or Blu-Ray DVD (especially for Blu-Ray since MGM would have to create a restored print for both shows, and there probably isn't the demand, sale-wise, for it to be a DVD in either DVD format.)
July 4, 2013 at 11:29 pm
Speaking of Blu-Ray, considering the enduring popularity of OL TOS, perhaps a joint effort by owner MGM, distributor Fox and
(co-owner? )
might result in a BD box set.
February 2, 2014 at 7:40 pm
I sawthis when I was a child and it absolutaly terrified me, I would love to see 'the ghost of sierra de cobre' come out on dvd.
i still get chills when I think about the moaning the ghost made and how it looked….please bring it back
June 1, 2014 at 4:27 am
I saw The Ghost of Sierra De Cobre when I was a child.I hid behind the book case and watched it whilst my 2 sisters and brother sat with my parents.I was primary school age at the time.When the movie finished I was caught and sent off to bed down a long long dark hall way.That movie affected me so much,as well as going to bed in a great big dark empty room,I have never ever forgotten the scenes. I now at the age of 51,always have a torch on hand and have lamps in every room as well as ceiling lights.I always give lights of some kind as a gift,always. I tell my children to always look out for this title incase it comes to DVD as I would love to see it again,I think hoping I will say"is that all it was" when the movie ends but I don't think so..
February 18, 2017 at 12:50 am
I actually loved Fanfare and both Egan and Savalas are fun to observe, likewise Ed Asher (an Outer Limits actor: It Came From Out of The Woodwork) and JD Cannon. The lighting and camera work are astonishing, pure Outer Limits.
August 4, 2018 at 12:30 pm
Is there anyone out there who could make me a dvd copy of Fanfare For A Death Scene? I'd gladly pay for one. I ordered one which turned out to be the short TV version, in poor quality. Amazon.com makes it available for viewing, but not as a dvd.


text:
abel is in the early stages of developing a closed-source financial app within a niche market. He is hiring his first employees, and he wants to take steps to ensure these new hires don't steal the code and run away. "I foresee disabling USB drives and DVD writers on my development machines," he writes. But will that be enough? Maybe a better question is: will that be too much?
See the original question here.
Trust goes a long way
You need to trust your developers.
Virtually all professional developers won't steal your source. It's understood that if you work for somebody else, the employer own the code that you write. Devs might copy code for reference purposes, but it's highly unlikely they will offer it for sale to anyone else. Getting caught isn't worth the risk.
More so, distrust breeds distrust. Disabling USB ports and DVD writers will engender a feeling of distrust which will, paradoxically, make it more likely that the developers will copy the code.
By all means add a secrecy clause to your contract, but it's probably unnecessary to highlight it as the most important part of the contract.
Who would buy on the black market?
Also, in the real world, third parties don't want stolen code. The risk is too great. Back when Informix and Oracle were duking it out for the enterprise relational database market in the mid-90s, one of Informix's developers quit to join Oracle (which was quite common), and took a hard drive full of Informix source with him (which wasn't). He told his new boss at Oracle, expecting a warm welcome, but instead he got a security team and an arrest. Then Oracle security called Informix security, and the hard drive went back to Informix without anyone from Oracle having looked at it.
Related: "How to prevent code from leaking outside work?"
Find a third-party solution
As others have mentioned, this primarily seems to be a people concern.
However, there are a number of major security vendors who market software solutions to data leaks:
- http://www.symantec.com/data-leak-prevention
- http://www.mcafee.com/us/products/total-protection-for-data-loss-prevention.aspx
- http://www.trendmicro.com/us/enterprise/data-protection/index.html
- http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns895/index.html
- http://www.emc.com/security/rsa-data-loss-prevention.htm
I can't comment to their effectiveness or appropriateness as I have limited experience with these solutions, but just thought that it might be helpful to point this out. Feel free to edit this answer with additional software solutions to data leaks.
Your employees are your real resource
GrandmasterB Answers (34 votes):
If these programmers can write the software in the first place, then...
They can simply rewrite it in a fraction of the time it took to originally develop it. Yes, it's true, developers arent complete idiots... once they figure out how to do something, they can often remember how they did it.
So, I guess you're just going to have to trust them, or else write the software yourself.
Find more answers or leave your own at the original post. See more Q&A like this at Programmers, a site for conceptual programming questions at Stack Exchange. And of course, feel free to login and ask your own.


text:
Michael Craig Miller, M.D. has a helpful article, "Sad Brain, Happy Brain," in this week's Newsweek. Here are some excerpts.
* * *
The brain is the mind is the brain. One hundred billion nerve cells, give or take, none of which individually has the capacity to feel or to reason, yet together generating consciousness. For about 400 years, following the ideas of French philosopher René Descartes, those who thought about its nature considered the mind related to the body, but separate from it. In this model—often called "dualism" or the mind-body problem—the mind was "immaterial," not anchored in anything physical. Today neuroscientists are finding abundant evidence . . . that separating mind from brain makes no sense. Nobel Prize-winning psychiatrist-neuroscientist Eric Kandel stated it directly in a watershed paper published in 1998: "All mental processes, even the most complex psychological processes, derive from operations of the brain."
Neuroscientists consider it settled that the mind arises from the cooperation of billions of interconnected cells that, individually, are no smarter than amoebae. But it's a shocking idea to some that the human mind could arise out of such an array of mindlessness. Many express amazement that emotions, pain, sexual feelings or religious belief could be a product of brain function. They are put off by the notion that such rich experiences could be reduced to mechanical or chemical bits. Or they worry that scientific explanations may seduce people into a kind of moral laziness that provides a ready excuse for any human failing: "My brain made me do it." Our brains indeed do make us do it, but that is nonetheless consistent with meaningful lives and moral choices. Writing for the President's Council on Bioethics earlier this year, philosopher Daniel Dennett made the point that building knowledge about the biology of mental life may improve our decision making, even our moral decision making. And it could enhance our chances of survival as a species, too.
. . . . The brain is responsible for most of what you care about—language, creativity, imagination, empathy and morality. And it is the repository of all that you feel. The endeavor to discovery the biological basis for these complex human experiences has given rise to a relatively new discipline: cognitive neuroscience. . . .
. . . .Neuroscientists . . . have a rapidly growing appreciation of the emotional brain and are beginning to look closely at these subjective states, which were formerly the province of philosophers and poets. It is complex science that holds great promise for improving the quality of life. Fortunately, understanding basic principles does not require an advanced degree.
* * *
Fear is a good place to start, because it is one of the emotions that cognitive neuroscientists understand well. It is an unpleasant feeling, but necessary to our survival; humans would not have lasted very long in the wilderness without it. Two deep brain structures called the amygdalae manage the important task of learning and remembering what you should be afraid of.
Each amygdala, a cluster of nerve cells named after its almond shape (from the Greek amugdale), sits under its corresponding temporal lobe on either side of the brain. Like a network hub, it coordinates information from several sources. It collects input from the environment, registers emotional significance and—when necessary—mobilizes a proper response. It gets information about the body's response to the environment (for example, heart rate and blood pressure) from the hypothalamus. It communicates with the reasoning areas in the front of the brain. And it connects with the hippocampus, an important memory center.
The fear system is extraordinarily efficient. It is so efficient that you don't need to consciously register what is happening for the brain to kick off a response. If a car swerves into your lane of traffic, you will feel the fear before you understand it. Signals travel between the amygdala and your crisis system before the visual part of your brain has a chance to "see." Organisms with slower responses probably did not get the opportunity to pass their genetic material along.
Fear is contagious because the amygdala helps people not only recognize fear in the faces of others, but also to automatically scan for it. People or animals with damage to the amygdala lose these skills. Not only is the world more dangerous for them, the texture of life is ironed out; the world seems less compelling to them because their "excitement" anatomy is impaired.
* * *
[We've excluded, here, interesting overviews of how the brain experiences with anger, happiness, sadness, and empathy.]
* * *
But empathy depends on more than an ability to mirror actions or sensations. It also requires what some cognitive neuroscientists call mentalizing, or a "theory of mind." Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading researcher in the study of autism, has identified the inability to generate a theory of mind as a central deficit in that illness. He has coined the term "mindblindness" to designate that problem. The corollary, "mindsightedness," requires healthy function in several areas of the brain. The processing and remembering of subtle language cues take place toward the ends of the temporal lobes. At the junction of the temporal and parietal lobes, the brain handles memory for events, moral judgment and biological motion (what we might call body language). And the prefrontal cortex handles many complex reasoning functions involved in feelings of empathy.
Not surprisingly, love also engages a whole lot of brain. Areas that are deeply involved include the insula, anterior cingulate, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens—in other words, parts of the brain that involve body and emotional perception, memory and reward. There is also an increase in neurotransmitter activity along circuits governing attachment and bonding, as well as reward (there's that word again). And there's scientific evidence that love really is blind; romantic love turns down or shuts off activity in the reasoning part of the brain and the amygdala. In the context of passion, the brain's judgment and fear centers are on leave. Love also shuts down the centers necessary to mentalize or sustain a theory of mind. Lovers stop differentiating you from me.
Faith is also being studied. Earlier this year the Annals of Neurology published an article by Sam Harris and colleagues exploring what happens in the brain when people are in the act of either believing or disbelieving. In an accompanying editorial, Oliver Sachs and Joy Hirsch underscored the significance of what the researchers found. Belief and disbelief activated different regions of the brain. But in the brain, all belief reactions looked the same, whether the stimulus was relatively neutral: an equation like (2+6)+8=16, or emotionally charged: "A Personal God exists, just as the Bible describes."
By putting a big religious idea next to a small math equation, some readers might think the researchers intend to glibly dismiss it. But a discovery about brain function does not imply a value judgment. And understanding the reality of the natural world—how the brain works—shouldn't muddle the big questions about human experience. It should help us answer them.
* * *


text:
This article was originally published in the November/December 1992 issue of Home Energy Magazine. Some formatting inconsistencies may be evident in older archive content.
| Home Energy Home Page | Back Issues of Home Energy |
Home Energy Magazine Online November/December 1992
In Search of the Missing Leak
by Michael Blasnik and Jim Fitzgerald
Michael Blasnik is research director for Grass Roots Alliance for a Solar Pennsylvania, a non-profit energy conservation agency in Philadelphia. Jim Fitzgerald of Jim Fitzgerald Contracting in Minneapolis is a trainer and consultant.
Two weatherization mavericks took an idea and the versatile blower door into the field and returned with three new methods to find and measure house envelope air leakage across building boundaries.
With the use of blower doors, weatherization programs have improved cost-effectiveness by prioritizing air sealing work, developing effective inspection procedures for determining if work was done properly, and assessing the impact of air sealing on indoor air quality and moisture problems. Yet possibilities still abound for increasing the sophistication of these programs through even newer blower door techniques. Using a new diagnostic approach and three related test procedures, we have found ways to make both qualitative and quantitative insights into the location and interconnections of building shell air leakage. Adding these procedures to the diagnostic toolbox will help improve the work of weatherization practitioners.
The tests are all relatively quick and easy to do (5-10 minutes each) and involve taking just a couple of measurements using a standard blower door and its gauges. Users shouldn't become discouraged if these tests seem too complicated from reading this article, which is intended to introduce the weatherization community to these new tools. Field training and experience will provide the fullest understanding. Be forewarned also that the numerical test results can be very inaccurate if measurements aren't made carefully and results interpreted cautiously.
Of Air Sealing and Series Leakage
Using current approaches, experienced blower door practitioners often find themselves unable to answer difficult questions about building air leakage. For example, how can one tell where to start air sealing in complicated houses with two attics, kneewalls, a basement, and a garage? Is it worth cutting an access hatch into an inaccessible attic? Will it be easier to seal the perimeter or the ceiling of the basement? Why do blower door readings sometimes fail to show much air flow reduction even though large leaks were sealed? How can we tell if we sealed all of the major bypasses? Is it worth the time to move all the stuff stored in a kneewall to look for leaks? Are the two kneewalls connected? Why do some houses seem to get leakier after the attic is insulated and vented? How can we tell if we successfully sealed the garage from the house?
All of these questions can be related to the central diagnostic problem of measuring or understanding series leakage paths. A series leakage path can be defined as a leak which passes through at least two boundaries between the inside of a house and the outside, usually with a buffer zone in between. These buffer zones can include attics, basements, garages, kneewall areas, or even individual rooms.
Experienced blower door practitioners recognize that most leaks in houses are not direct leaks to the outside like window and door leakage, but instead follow more complicated paths through two or more surfaces between the inside and outside. For example, attic bypasses often involve long paths through building cavities before they enter the attic and then connect to the outside through the roof vents. Other leakage paths may go through basements or garages before connecting to the outside.
Basic Principles of Series Leakage Paths
Series leakage paths have certain properties which allow blower door users to gain considerable understanding about where to locate the major leaks in a house, how they are connected, and whether they have been sealed effectively. But because these properties are not obvious, they have not been used until recently.
When depressurizing a house by 50 Pascals (Pa) with a blower door we should find about a 50 Pa pressure difference anywhere we stick a tube outside (if it isn't very windy). We should also find no pressure difference between any two zones inside the house. What does it mean if we measure the pressure difference between the house and the attic and find that it reads 40 Pa? If there are any connections between the house and a zone, then depressurizing the house by 50 Pa will lead to some depressurization of the zone relative to the outside and therefore less than a 50 Pa difference between the house and the zone. Measuring house-to-zone and zone- to-exterior pressure differences indicates how tight house and zone are relative to each other. These zone pressure difference measurements are fundamental for understanding series leakage paths. The measurements begin to have some meaning if we recognize a basic principle of series leakage paths:
The ratio of the pressure differences across the interior and exterior surfaces of the zone in a series leak is related to the ratio of their leakage rates.
For example, if the ceiling (in other words, attic bypasses) and roof are equally leaky, then the pressure difference across the ceiling will be midway between the inside and outside pressures: 25 Pa if the house is depressurized by 50 Pa. If the ceiling is completely airtight, then the pressure difference across it will be 50 Pa, and the pressure difference across the roof will be 0 Pa, indicating that the attic is really outside. If the roof is airtight, then the pressure difference across it will be 50 Pa and the pressure difference across the ceiling will be 0 Pa, indicating that attic is really inside. If the roof is leakier than the ceiling, then the pressure difference between the house and attic (the tighter side) will be greater than 25 Pa and the pressure difference between the attic and outside (the leakier side) will be less than 25 Pa. The tighter one side is relative to the other, the greater is the pressure difference across that side.
If we make certain assumptions about the nature of the leaks (in particular, about their flow exponents), these measurements can be used to quantify the ratio of the interior side leakage rate to the exterior side leakage rate. For example, assuming typical building leakage (flow exponent=0.65), then if the pressure difference between the house and attic is about 45 Pa (when the house is depressurized by 50 Pa), then the roof is about four times leakier than the ceiling. (For the technically precise reader, the sensor is the reciprocal of the ratio of the pressures raised to the 0.65 power.)
Quantifying Zone Leakage
While measuring the pressure differences across the interior and exterior surfaces of the zone can provide useful information about the leakage path (for example, the ceiling is leakier than the roof or the basement is leakier to the inside than to the outside), it doesn't tell anything about how much leakage there is. The leakage rate can be quantified if one more piece of information is known about the flow path. For example, if we measure 25 Pa across the ceiling and we also know that the roof is leaky (because it is vented), then the ceiling must be leaky, too. We have developed three test methods which quantify the leakage rates using different approaches for getting this other piece of information about the flow path:
Method 1 requires adding a hole of known size to one side of the flow path and measuring how the pressure differences change.
Method 2 requires opening a door between the house and zone and measuring the change in whole house leakage.
Method 3 requires estimating the amount of roof venting for attics.
These tests all provide estimates of the effective leakage rates of the interior and exterior surfaces of the leakage path, and of the total leakage rate attributable to the series flow (1). (See box Three Pressure Diagnostic Tests.) All of these methods use the common leakage rate cfm50 which is the leakage rate of the building in cubic feet per minute when the pressure difference is 50 Pa. (For background on this measurement, see HE July/Aug '86, p. 16.)
While they haven't been validated against the more established but difficult and time-consuming zone leakage tests which require two or more blower doors, these tests (particularly Methods 1 and 2) have provided surprisingly accurate predictions of blower door-measured leakage reductions from air sealing in the few limited cases where such comparisons have been made by the authors. They have also repeatedly proven their value in the field, predicting where major problems would be found (2).
In addition to measuring the leakage rates of the zones, pressure measurements can be used to find connections between different zones. For example, when measuring the pressure difference between the house and kneewall on one side of the house, and then opening an access into the opposite kneewall, a near total loss of pressure would indicate that the two kneewalls are well connected through the floor system or top attic. Connections are also frequently found between the attic and the garage or basement. These interconnections can be tricky, leading to errors when combining zone leakage rates because of measuring some leakage paths twice. (For example, leakage paths usually go from the attic down into the basement and back up into the house.) In this situation, one can seal the more important zone first (the attic in this case) and then get more realistic estimates for the other connected zones.
Common Measurements and Problems
All three methods start by using the blower door to depressurize the house by 50 Pa and then taking three initial pressure difference measurements: house-to-zone, zone-to-exterior, and house-to- exterior. (The 50 Pa requirement is merely a convenience which simplifies the usage of the accompanying graphs.) One may need to drill a hole in a closet ceiling to push a tube into the attic if it can't just slide around the hatch or door. The measurements can be made with a standard blower door pressure gauge although a digital manometer makes measurements faster and more accurate. Regardless of the device, measurements must be made very carefully:
Accuracy in measurement is most important when either pressure difference is less than 5 Pa. It is the ratio of the pressures that enters the calculations-a ratio of 48:2 is very different from a ratio of 49:1, but a ratio of 30:20 is quite close to a ratio of 31:19. The results can be particularly misleading at the extreme pressure ratios common with well vented attics. When it doesn't require much effort, some practitioners have temporarily sealed off some of the roof venting to get more reliable estimates of bypass leakage in these circumstances.
Because of the greater uncertainty when one side is much leakier than the other, the methods generally work better at finding a problem rather than proving that there isn't one. Wind can create very large errors necessitating extra care on windy days, particularly in finding a good reference for the exterior pressure. (Four tube pressure-averaging devices may help.) Never trust the test results blindly; judgement and experience will help decide if the results are plausible.
Using Results Wisely
Just because it's possible to measure air leakage rates between the house and the attic, garage, or basement doesn't necessarily mean that one should always make these measurements or believe them. These tests should only be used to reveal something worthwhile or help a weatherization crew work more effectively. The tests can be particularly helpful for prioritizing work in complicated houses with many places to look for leaks (like houses with two attics, kneewalls, a garage, or a basement). In simpler houses the tests may be most useful for checking whether the crew missed something important.
In houses in which it proves difficult to reduce leakage, the tests may help explain why. Tests may also help indicate where the real leakage is. Some weatherization programs use the tests primarily as an inspection procedure to determine, for instance, if the contractor really did seal the bypasses as claimed.
Understanding when to use the tests and how to interpret the results is as important as knowing how to use them. Be aware of the large uncertainties in the results, particularly on windy days or when trying to measure small pressure differences. Diagnostic tests are meant to supplement, not replace, primary diagnostic tools-one's head, eyes, and hands. If the results seem unbelievable, they probably aren't accurate.
Future Directions
With experience, practitioners and researchers may find their own uses for these tests or variations on them. For example, the methods can be reversed-the hole or door is opened on the outside and certain adjustments are made in using the graphs. The methods can be integrated into a blower door field computer program, eliminating the need for graphs and the 50 Pa test requirement. The computer can do all the calculating. Some researchers have started applying Methods 1 and 2 to duct leakage measurements, treating the ductwork as a zone. In particular, Method 2 can improve the standard blower door subtraction method for measuring duct leakage. When this proves unworkable, Method 1 can be used. Others are wondering whether favorable tests results could qualify as credit for unintentional roof ventilation, limiting the need for added venting when insulating.
These procedures are still evolving, and while they have been published only for the first time here, the authors have written a short guide used to supplement field training sessions throughout the country. A paper on the theoretic underpinnings of these techniques has been accepted for an upcoming American Society for Testing and Materials conference in October 1993.
The total air series leakage rate is always smaller than the leakage rate of either side because the interior and exterior sides both contribute to reducing the leakage rate. For example, the house-to-zone leakage rate represents the leakage rate value one would get by testing just that surface by itself, without the exterior surface slowing down the air flow. Therefore, leakage through the total flow path-as measured by a blower door-will always be less than the leakage through the tighter of the two surfaces. The multipliers in Table 1 take this into account.
For a discussion of more established zone leakage measurements, see Modera, M.P. and M.K. Herlin, Investigation of a Fan-Pressurization Technique for Measuring Interzonal Air Leakage, Air Change Rate and Airtightness in Buildings, ASTM STP 1067, M.H. Sherman, Ed., American Society for Testing and Materials, Philadelphia, 1990, pp. 183-193.
Three Pressure Diagnostic Tests
Method 1: Adding A Hole
Common Uses:
Attics, kneewalls, smaller cavities (bays, floor systems)
1) With house at 50 Pa, measure zone pressure differences-house- to-zone, zone-to-exterior, and house-to-exterior-checking that the first two add up to the third.
2) Add a hole to inside surface, for example open the attic or kneewall access fully or partly.
3) Remeasure pressures-making sure house is depressurized 50 Pa, adjusting fan as needed.
4) Pressure drop (Step 3) = decrease in house-to-zone pressure from added hole.
5) Measure size of hole in square inches.
6) In the Method 1 graph, find initial house-to-zone pressure difference on horizontal axis.
7) Find where this value intersects the Pressure drop curve corresponding to the value in Step 4.
8) On left axis, find the Leakage rate between house and zone per square inch added hole (cfm50/in2).
9) The house-to-zone leakage rate = value in Step 8 x the area of hole.
10) Calculate zone-to-exterior and total path leakages by looking up multipliers from Table 1. (Look in the column labeled with the initial house-to-zone pressure difference.) Then multiply each value by house-to-zone leakage rate (Step 9).
Method 1 works best when the initial pressures are not near 0 Pa or 50 Pa and the pressure drop is substantial (for example, 15-25 Pa).
Table 1. Method 1 Multipliers
Initial pressure difference, house-to-zone (Pascals) 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 48 49 Multiplier to obtain zone-to-exterior leakage rates(1) 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.3 1.7 2.5 4.2 7.9 12.6 Multiplier to obtain total flow path leakage rates(2) .35 .46 .55 .64 .72 .79 .87 .93 .97 .99
(1) Ratio of zone-to-exterior leakage rate to house-to-zone leakage rate (2) Ratio of total flow path leakage rate to house-to-zone leakage rate
Method 2: Opening A Door
Common Uses:
Basements, garages, attics with doors or pull-down stairs Measurements:
1) With house depressurized to 50 Pa, measure whole house leakage rate and zone pressure differences.
2) Open door between inside and zone.
3) Remeasure whole house leakage rate, making sure house is still at 50 Pa.
4) The house leakage rate increase = leakage rate with the zone door open (Step 3) minus initial house leakage rate (Step 1).
5) In the Method 2 graph, find initial house-to-zone pressure difference on horizontal axis.
6) Find where this value intersects the House-to-zone curve.
7) On the left axis, find the Ratio of zone leakage rate to the house leakage rate increase (cfm50/cfm50).
8) House-to-zone leakage rate = value in Step 7 x the house leakage rate increase (Step 4).
9) Use same method (Steps 5-8) to calculate leakage rate of zone- to-exterior and total flow path, finding Zone to exterior and Total path curves and reading new values from vertical axis.
Method 2 works best when the air leakage rate increase can be measured well (at least 200 cfm(sub 50)), and when the initial pressure difference is not near 0 Pa or 50 Pa.
Method 3: Single Point Attic Test For Roof Venting
Common Uses:
Vented Attics
1) With house at 50 Pa, measure zone pressure differences.
2) Estimate net vent area of roof in square inches (based on visual inspection and accounting for screening, louvers, and other features). Calculations
3) In the Method 3 graph, find inital house-to-attic pressure difference on horizontal axis.
4) Find where this value intersects with Bypass leakage curve.
5) On the left axis, find the Bypass leakage rate per square inch of net vent area (cfm50/in2).
6) Bypass (house-to-attic) leakage rate = value from Step 5 x vent area (Step 2).
7) Use same method (Steps 3-6) to calculate leakage rate of entire flow path, finding Total path leakage curve and reading new value from vertical axis.
Method 3 is quick and easy-but crude because of the difficulty in accurately estimating net vent area and fixed assumptions about the leakage rate per square inch of vent area (which actually varies depending on the type of vent). Like the other methods, it performs poorly when either pressure is close to 0 Pa or 50 Pa.
One Attic's Bypass Leakage
A retrofitter would like to determine the extent of bypass leakage in an attic as part of an inspection or prioritizing work. Because there is an attic access in a closet ceiling, she finds that Method 1 would work best.
She depressurizes the house by 50 Pascals (Pa) and sets up the pressure gauge in the room with the closet, and then runs a tube into the attic and a tube out a nearby window. Pressure gauges indicate 42 Pa between the house and the attic, 7 Pa between the attic and outside, and 51 Pa between the house and outside. The numbers are close to adding up (42+7 = 50 and 51 = 50).
The retrofitter removes the attic access cover, leaving an opening 15 in. x 12 in. (180 in.2). She adjusts the blower door to maintain 50 Pa house pressure. Now the gauges measure 27 Pa between the house and attic, and 25 Pa between the attic and outside. (The house-to- exterior measurements read 50 Pa.) The house-to-attic pressure dropped by 15 Pa (42 - 27 = 15). The numbers are close to adding up correctly.
She finds 42 Pa on the Method 1 graph's horizonal axis, and then finds the 15 Pa Pressure Drop curve. On the vertical axis-Leakage area between house and zone per square inch of added hole (cfm50/in2)-she finds about 5 cfm50/in2. The leakage rate of attic bypasses is calculated as 5 cfm(sub 50)/in2 (from the graph) x 180 in2 (the size of the hole) = 900 cfm(sub 50).
Anyone using this method can get a rough estimate of uncertainty by assuming the first measurement was either a couple of Pascals too high or low. Using the graph, someone might estimate that the bypass leakage is 500-1,200 cfm(sub 50), and since 100 cfm(sub 50) is probably too much anyway, one shouldn't be worried about the exact number now.
The retrofitter can estimate how leaky the roof is by looking at the table for Method 1 (see Table 1) and looking for a column labeled 42 Pa. However, because there are only columns for 40 Pa and 45 Pa, she averages, from Multiplier to obtain zone-to- exterior leakage rates, 2.5 Pa and 4.2 Pa to find a factor of 3.3 for attic-to-exterior leakage. Attic-to-exterior leakage is then estimated as 3.3 x 900 cfm(sub 50) (leakage rate of 900 cfm(sub 50) between the house and zone) = 3000 cfm(sub 50). The total flow path is estimated similarly-0.9 (the Multiplier for total flow path pressure difference) x 900 cfm(sub 50) = 800 cfm(sub 50).
There are plenty of leaks, so get to work!
- 1


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Patriot 50 Series
Patriot 40 Series
Get directions, hours of operation, and parts store access for West Plains, Inc..
West Plains, Inc.
There's a reason you do business with Case IH. As the global leader in agricultural equipment, you can be assured you're talking to the experts. So when it comes to looking for service and maintenance of current Case IH equipment or if you're looking for information and guidance on new equipment, rest assured that West Plains, Inc. located in Dickinson, ND is a Case IH authorized dealer. Contact them for all your Case IH-related needs.


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text:
Matthew Hutson has an excellent piece in the latest Pscyhology Today looking at the psychological origins of magical thinking. Among other topics, Hutson highlights some research by Situationist contributor Emily Pronin. Here are a few pieces of the article.
* * *
Last year John Lennon went on tour. He visited, among other locations, Oklahoma City, Waco, New Orleans, and Virginia Tech, spreading a message of peace and love at the sites of tragic events. You may not have recognized him, though, covered in scars and cigarette burns. But to hear him, there would have been no mistaking his presence.
On this journey, Lennon assumed the form of a piano, specifically the one on which he composed Imagine. "It gives off his spirit, and what he believed in, and what he preached for many years," says Caroline True, the tour director and a colleague of the Steinway's current owner, singer George Michael. Free of velvet ropes, it could be touched or played by anyone. According to Libra LaGrone, whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, "It was like sleeping in your grandpa's sweatshirt at night. Familiar, beautiful, and personal."
"I never went anywhere saying this is a magic piano and it's going to cure your ills," True says. But she consistently saw even the most skeptical hearts warm to the experience—even in Virginia, where the piano landed just a month after the massacre. "I had no idea an inanimate object could give people so much."Maybe you're not a Beatles fan. Maybe you even hate peace and love. But you are wired to find meaning in the world, a predisposition that leaves you with less control over your beliefs than you may think. . . .
Magical thinking springs up everywhere. Some irrational beliefs (Santa Claus?) are passed on to us. But others we find on our own. Survival requires recognizing patterns—night follows day, berries that color will make you ill. And because missing the obvious often hurts more than seeing the imaginary, our skills at inferring connections are overtuned. No one told Wade Boggs that eating chicken before every single game would help his batting average; he decided that on his own, and no one can argue with his success. We look for patterns because we hate surprises and because we love being in control.
* * *
"There are many layers of belief," psychologist Carol Nemeroff says. "And the answer for many people, especially with regard to magic, is, 'Most of me doesn't believe but some of me does.'" People will often acknowledge their gut reaction and say it makes no sense to act on it—but do it anyway. Other times, they'll incorporate superstition into their worldview alongside other explanations. "For example," says Susan Gelman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, "God puts you in the path of an HIV-positive lover, but biology causes you to contract the virus from his semen."
Often we don't even register our wacky beliefs. Seeing causality in coincidence can happen even before we have a chance to think about it; the misfiring is sometimes perceptual rather than rational. "Consider what happens when you honk your horn, and just at that moment a streetlight goes out," observes Brian Scholl, director of Yale's Perception and Cognition Laboratory. "You may never for a moment believe that your honk caused the light to go out, but you will irresistibly perceive that causal relation. The fact remains that our visual systems refuse to believe in coincidences." Our overeager eyes, in effect, lay the groundwork for more detailed superstitious ideation. And it turns out that no matter how rational people consider themselves, if they place a high value on hunches they are hard-pressed to hit a baby's photo on a dartboard. On some level they're equating image with reality. Even our aim falls prey to intuition.
* * *
1. Anything can be sacred.
To some, John Lennon's piano is sacred. Most married people consider their wedding rings sacred. Kids with no notion of sanctity will bust a lung wailing over their lost blanky. Personal investment in inanimate objects might delicately be called sentimentality, but what else is it if not magical thinking? There's some invisible meaning attached to these things: an essence. A wedding ring or a childhood blanket could be replaced by identical or near-identical ones, but those impostors just wouldn't be the same. What makes something sacred is not its material makeup but its unique history. . . .
In many cases the value of an object comes from who owned it or used it or touched it, an example of "magical contagion." . . . Paul Rozin at the University of Pennsylvania and Nemeroff contend that magical contagion may emerge from our evolved fear of germs, which, like essences, are invisible, easily transmissible, and have far-reaching consequences. Well before humans had any concept of germ theory, we quarantined the ill and avoided touching dead bodies. The deep intuition that moral or psychological qualities can pass between people, or that an object carries its history with it, could just be an extension of the adaptive tendency to pay close attention to the pathways of illness.But that doesn't mean we're good at evaluating sources of contagion. Nemeroff found that people draw the germs of their lovers as less scary-looking than those of enemies, and they say those germs would make them less ill. She also found that undergrads base condom usage on how emotionally safe they feel with a partner more than on objective risk factors for catching STDs.
2. Anything can be cursed.
Essences are not always good. In fact, people show stronger reactions to negative taint than to positive. Mother Teresa cannot fully neutralize the evil in a sweater worn by Hitler, a fact that fits the germ theory of moral contagion: A drop of sewage does more to a bucket of clean water than a drop of clean water does to a bucket of sewage. Traditional cleaning can't erase bad vibes either. Studies by Rozin and colleagues show that people have a strong aversion to wearing laundered clothes that have been worn by a murderer or even by someone who's lost a leg in an accident. Magical contagion can also flow in reverse. Many people wouldn't want an AIDS patient taking over a hospital bed that they had just left, and about a third of undergrads would feel uncomfortable if an enemy possessed their used hairbrush. "This rests on the assumption that there is no separation of space and time," Nemeroff says. "The hairbrush and I were in contact, we merged. At that mystical level where all is one, acting on it is acting on me."
3. Mind rules over matter.
Wishing is probably the most ubiquitous kind of magical spell around, the unreasonable expectation that your thoughts have force and energy to act on the world. Who has not resisted certain thoughts for fear of jinxing oneself? Made a wish while blowing out birthday candles? Tried to push a field goal fair mid-flight using nothing but hope and concentration? Emily Pronin and colleagues at Princeton and Harvard convinced undergrads in a study that they had put voodoo curses on fellow subjects. While targeting their thoughts on the other students, hexers pushed pins into voodoo dolls and the "victims" feigned headaches. Some victims had been instructed to behave like jackasses during the study (the "Stupid People Shouldn't Breed" T-shirt was a nice touch), eliciting ill will from pin pushers. Those who dealt with the jerks felt much more responsible for the headaches than the control group did. If you think it, and it happens, then you did it, right? Pronin describes the results as a particular form of seeing causality in coincidence, where the "cause" is especially conspicuous because it's hard to miss what's going on in your own head.
4. Rituals bring good luck.
Whenever I fly, I place my hands on the fuselage as I step onto the plane. The habit began when I was a kid innocently in awe of flying machines, but over the years as I continued to touch the plane and continued to not die horribly, my brain decided I was keeping the apparatus aloft, and now I do it for peace of mind. To witness the mindless repetition of actions with no proven causal effect, there's no better laboratory than the athletic field. The anthropologist George Gmelch of Union College in Schenectady has paid close attention to the elaborate dances players do during baseball games. Because performance while hitting and pitching is so unpredictable (compared to fielding), most behavioral tics occur on the mound or at the plate. Mike Hargrove was nicknamed "the human rain delay" because of his obsessive shenanigans while at bat. B.F. Skinner famously showed "superstition" in pigeons by locking them in a box, feeding them at regular intervals, and watching them associate random behaviors with food rewards, eventually building up intricate routines of behavior. When you combine kicking dirt and readjusting your helmet with strikes and home runs, you can see how the batter's box would quickly become an open-air Skinner box.
We use ritual acts most often when there is little cost to them, when an outcome is uncertain or beyond our control, and when the stakes are high—hence my communion with the fuselage. People who truly trust in their rituals exhibit a phenomenon known as "illusion of control," the belief that they have more influence over the world than they actually do. And it's not a bad delusion to have—a sense of control encourages people to work harder than they might otherwise. In fact, a fully accurate assessment of your powers, a state known as "depressive realism," haunts people with clinical depression, who in general show less magical thinking.
* * *
6. Karma's a bitch.
. . . . Belief in a just world puts our minds at ease: Even if things are beyond our control, they happen for a reason. The idea of arbitrary pain and suffering is just too much for many people to bear, and the need for moral order may help explain the popularity of religion; in fact, just-worlders are more religious than others. . . .
7. The world is alive.
To believe that the universe is sympathetic to our wishes is to believe that it has a mind or a soul, however rudimentary. . . . It's not that we think all matter is fully alive—even babies are surprised when inanimate objects appear to move on their own—it's that we feel all matter has that potential. . . . Lindeman Marjaana, a psychologist at the University of Helsinki, defines magical thinking as treating the world as if it has mental properties (animism) or expecting the mind to exhibit the properties of the physical world. She found that people who literally endorse phrases such as, "Old furniture knows things about the past," or, "An evil thought is contaminated," also believe in things like feng shui (the idea that the arrangement of furniture can channel life energy) and astrology. They are also more likely to be religious and to believe in paranormal agents. [Eugene] Subbotsky says there are benefits to thinking animistically. "It's much more comfortable to think that your fate is written down in a constellation of stars than that you're one of a certain group of intelligent animals who are lost in frozen space forever."
* * *
To read the all of the Hutson's article (we cut out a lot of interesting sections, including "To name is to rule," "Magical Thinking: Positive psychology or psychosis lite?" and " Primed For The Future," click here. For a sample of previous, related Situationist posts, go to "Patriots Lose: Justice Restored!" and "The Magic of Jonathan Papelbon's 'Knuckle Knock,'" "Red Sox Magic," and "Think You've Got Magical Powers?"